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Her boy is a child of the sun.
He dances like there’s light bursting beneath his skin, spinning through long blades of grass that whisper his praises as he passes.
He sings in honey colored tones, and the breeze carries it up mountain peaks and across river beds, so the water and the earth stop to listen.
He cries and the sky cries with him, fat drops falling from rolling clouds, covering his sobs with great claps of thunder.
Her boy holds her with freckled arms and soft skin, and when he takes her hand in his, she feels like the luckiest person in the world.
She teaches him the ways of man, and he teaches her the way of the gods. The words that spill from his mouth she doesn’t always understand, but he says them so sweetly she doesn’t mind, telling him he is clever, and wonderful, and so very good.
He doesn’t always understand her either. Sometimes their conversations end in confused tears, and floor banging tantrums, and hiding at the tops of the tallest trees. She doesn’t mind. She waits with whispered reassurance and open arms and he always, always comes back to her.
Puffy loves her boy like he is the sun and moon and stars all wrapped in one, and she tells him so while he sleeps, curled up in her lap with a blanket tossed over his small shoulders.
He loves her like she is the one who created the universe, looks at her like she is his entire world.
One day, her boy grows up. One day, her boy becomes a man. It happens so suddenly, it makes her lose her breath.
He is still made of sunlight, but it’s different now. He hides it sometimes, for reasons Puffy can’t describe. He still dances with her in the meadow behind their house, but his steps are heavier, and he slows sometimes, unable to take another step.
She watches as his shoulders become broad, and slouch forward, as if he carries an invisible weight atop them.
He sings, but it’s quiet, and broken, and only when he thinks no one is listening. Puffy stays hidden and listens until he fades off with a tired sigh. It makes her heart hurt.
He stops holding her hand.
He doesn’t cry anymore.
She feels herself losing him.
The man loses sight of what’s important. Or maybe he becomes so obsessed with what’s important, he loses everything else. Puffy isn’t sure. She watches him crumble. She watches him fall.
He takes all the things that used to make his face brighten, and casts them aside without a second thought. Old blankets burn, and flower vases shatter, and two men with sad eyes turn their gaze away and stop speaking to him. Puffy begs them to stay, saying he doesn’t mean it... she knows he doesn’t mean it, and he’s lost, and afraid, and needs his friends to find his way back. But the wounds he has sowed are too deep. The two men take up the hurt on their backs, and stay far away.
She builds him a house on foundations of desperate hope… hope that it will keep him close, it will make him stay.
He doesn’t stay.
She destroys it.
With no home of his own, he destroys theirs. It comes in the form of explosions that make the ground tremble. A smoking crater where proud buildings once stood. A web of obsidian casting shadows on the survivors below. And in that moment… she’s afraid of him. She’s afraid of her boy made of sunlight. It’s all wrong.
She meets other children, little boys with scars marring their skin and fear in their eyes. They aren’t the same, they aren’t her boy, but she takes them in anyways. She keeps them away from red eyed men, and brewing wars. Heaven knows they’ve fought too many wars. They take her hands, and cry into her neck, and she rubs soothing hands against their backs. And oh how she misses her boy.
She doesn’t want to believe it. She sees the curled malice in his lips, and the pointed sword held to the throat of a mere child, and pleads, pleads to wake up from whatever twisted nightmare they are in.
Puffy doesn’t wake up.
She watches her boy die. Once. Twice. She watches blood pour from his nose, and stomach and forehead and thinks this is all wrong. This can’t be reality. This is her boy with his sun-kissed skin, and golden hair, and freckled arms. He speaks the way of the gods, so why is he dying? When the light leaves his eyes she drops to her knees, unable to breathe. When they take him away, she looks down and tries not to be sick.
She moves on, living her life in blues and greys, wandering streets that feel familiar and foreign at the same time.
She collects glass for months, and spends even longer using it to cover the gaping hole in the earth. She thinks it will make her feel better.
It doesn’t.
She stops dancing.
She doesn’t cry anymore.
Six months pass.
Puffy tries to forget him.
She doesn’t.
Exactly one year after they took him away, she finds herself at the gates of the dark, looming prison. She doesn’t remember walking there.
Sam asks if she wants to come in, and she sputters for a long moment, standing at the entrance on shaking legs, unable to come up with an answer. He opens the portal and waits patiently.
It takes her five minutes to square her shoulders, set her jaw, and cross through it.
Sam reads the instructions, his voice sounding fuzzy in her ears. She signs the papers numbly. Gives up her inventory mindlessly. Follows Sam’s directions perfectly and answers questions without hesitation.
It takes them forty minutes to reach the cell. Forty minutes for her stomach to churn and twist and her heart to pound loudly in her ears. She stands in the doorway with lava lighting her face and tells Sam she can’t do it. The lava burns and her throat is tight and everything is tilting ever so slightly.
“Are you sure?” He asks, and she falters.
She’s not sure.
“We can go back if you want,” he says and her lip trembles.
She can’t go back. Icy cold fear grips her insides and her hands are shaking and she can’t go back because her boy is on the other side of this glowing wall of heat. Alone. He always hated being alone.
She shakes her head, and faces forward, chasing short breaths of air.
Sam flips a lever and the lava hisses, retreating painfully slowly, inch by inch.
The chasm opens, revealing the cell.
Revealing a man.
The ground shifts and pushes her forward. She stumbles slightly, regaining her balance and straightening up as it moves closer and closer to the obsidian box. He steps forward to meet her. Puffy steels herself. She will be composed. She will be strong. She will not waver.
A voice fills the silence.
“Mom?”
She breaks.
Her boy’s voice comes low and raspy, worn with lack of use.
His once golden skin exists only shades of gray and blue and purple. Hollow, and scarred, and bruised.
Chains keep his too-long legs anchored to the ground. He can’t dance in here.
No one cuts his sandy hair anymore. It hangs long, obscuring dull eyes that don’t shine with the same green of times passed.
The barrier drops, and for the very first time in a long time...
The man cries.
His broad slumped shoulders shake with great heaving sobs, and he reaches for her, like he once did.
Like thousands of times before, she takes her boy’s hand. His skin is rough, and his long fingers completely engulf her own. She still feels like the luckiest person in the world.
Through choked whimpers, he repeats her name like a prayer, like she is the sun and moon and stars all wrapped in one, and in that moment he is far more man than god.
She thinks maybe her boy might not have been made out of sunlight after all. Maybe he was always made to be like her. Flesh and blood and bone, and mistakes, and hurt, and tears, and love.
She holds him with open arms and whispered reassurances all the same.